In this industry, specifically the lead generation industry, you don’t have to be around very long as a lead buyer to be able to start sniffing out the questionable lead sources. They claim to generate thousands of leads through SEO and Paid Search, but a quick glance at their websites stats tells a vastly different story. How do they get all those thousands of leads? It gets fairly easy and over time you learn to trust your instincts.

The problem arises when the companies are a little more difficult to spot. They are top tier lead companies and in many cases they don’t play games with their buyers, but what they do do is play games with their affiliates or lead partners. If you are in the EDU space it is possible that these companies are directly representing you and your company. They buy leads on your behalf, as an Agency of Record, and skim numbers, don’t fire pixels, return more leads then allowed. They get away with this because they have the buying power to bully partners around. Are they representing your company they you would like them too? What happened to ethics in business? I don’t know.

In the next few months there will be new developments in our industry that I hope will bring ethics, honesty and higher business standards. Keep an eye out.

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